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Meridian Swim & Divers Compete at Championships

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FEBRUARY 24 - MARCH 2, 2022 | PAGE 5

by Leah Kirk

Special to the News-Press

The Meridian Swim & Dive team traveled to Richmond, Virginia last week for the 2022 Class 3 Swim and Dive Championships. The Mustangs sent 22 athletes to compete against over 30 High Schools in the State.

Mustang Diving kicked off the event on Thursday evening at St. Catherine’s School where the Mustangs sent a record number of divers to a State Meet. The Boys team started off the events at 5:30 where they took on 16 Divers from across the State. The Girls Team followed at 6:30 with 20 divers, many from Southwest Virginia. Four of the five divers, prior to the start of the season, had little to no experience diving, but continued to work hard each week, earning their spots at States after just 3 and a half months of diving.

On the Boys team, Freshmen Connor Tweddle and Markus Kummer continued to impress as the meet continued. Connor placed 5th with a score of 212.60 followed by Markus in 9th with a score of 174.50. The Girls Team had some very steep competition from twotime State Champion Natalie Jones of Christiansburg, among others. However, Freshman Jane AfsahMohallatee and Sophmore Julia Hall both rose to the occasion. Jane placed 6th with a score of 263.35 and Julia placed 9th with a score of 207.65. Keep an eye on the Dive Team over the next few years as it continues to grow.

Swimming Prelims began at 7 a.m. on Saturday, February 19 as the 17 Mustang swimmers competed to advance to the Finals. The top 16 in each event continued on to Finals and for the first time ever, all 17 Swimmers advanced to Finals. The Boys 200 Free Relay team, comprised of Juniors Ben McCracken, Carson Ruoff, and Wesley Sturgill, along with Freshman Wills Fleming, had a 1st seed into Finals. Every relay team advanced to Finals.

All Individuals and Relays continued to impress throughout the day as the excitement continued to build. Due to Covid, there were no spectators allowed last year, but fans were out in full force this year bringing an electricity to the all-day event. The Meridian Boys Team came in 4th overall, their highest placing at States since rising up to 3A just a few short years ago. The Girls Team still came to impress with a 13th place finish. As the meet continued, many of the Mustangs had personal best times and continued to impress with their determination and drive.

Final Results: 200 Medley Relay – Wesley Sturgill, Wills Fleming, Ben McCracken, and Carson Ruoff – 4th; Anna Dickson, Mya Taheri, Lydia Sturgill, and Lexi Ries – 13th. 200 Free – Anna Dickson – 4th; Wesley Sturgill – 15th. 200 IM – Wills Fleming – 10th. 50 Free – Carson Ruoff – 2nd, Ben McCracken 7th; Lexi Ries – 16th. 1 M Diving – Connor Tweddle – 5th, Markus Kummer – 9th, 100 Fly – Ben McCracken – 5th; Lydia Sturgill – 15th. 100 Free – Carson Ruoff – 5th; Lexi Ries – 12th. 500 Free – Alexa Wagner – 16th. 200 Free Relay – Ben McCracken, Wesley Sturgill, Wills Fleming, Carson Ruoff – 2nd; Elysha York, Emerson Mellon, Alexis Niemi, Lauren Mellon – 13th. 100 Back – Wesley Sturgill – 9th, Matthew Janicki 14th; Anna Dickson, 13th. 100 Breast – Wills Fleming – 11th. 400 Free Relay – Matthew Janicki, Jonathan Katen, Eddie Hughes, Gaspar Green – 14th; Lexi Ries, Lydia Sturgill, Elysha York, Anna Dickson – 10th.

The Mustangs will be back in action next fall. The team would like to thank the Mustang Community for their support – especially the team’s fantastic families – for being a huge part of the success of the team each year.

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MERIDIAN SWIM & DIVE compete in State Championship meet. (Photo: Leah Kirt)

During Black History Month a Yorktown High School grad named Jack (class of ’65) spawned a rich discussion on Facebook’s “I Grew Up in Arlington, VA.” Why, with such thorough coverage of the history-making integration of Stratford Junior High in 1959, there was less clarity on when Yorktown integrated?

I bore witness to some of that drama at my alma mater.

Facebookers responded that the school boundaries were “gerrymandered” in the early ‘60s by a Republican county board and appointed school board. That meant most of the AfricanAmerican students from Halls Hill after desegregation (and the close of Hoffman-Boston High in 1964) went to Washington-Lee (now Liberty).

“In its place in time, Arlington was attempting progress in a very conservative state,” noted Terry ‘67. Others recalled only one or two Black classmates, and one Black teacher (Government instructor Harvey Wright).

Sterling ’69 provided the text of a 1965 U.S. District Court case (Wanner v. County School Board of Arlington County) brought successfully by white parents objecting to their kids being zoned into the newly integrated Thomas Jefferson Junior High. The county had declared all the schools officially integrated, having appointed a committee in 1964 to redraw boundaries and asking to be relieved of the 1956 order to

Our Man in Arlington desegregate. By Charlie Clark Several alumni recalled just one or two Black classmates at Yorktown in the early and mid-‘60s. English teacher Eric Christenson told me he cultivated long-term friendships with two of those isolated souls, one of whom “did well in our class to adjust to the change.” The other “was “a sullen and angry young man” who in later life launched a successful business and apologized to Eric for not taking better advantage of opportunities. Math teacher Wilmer Mountain recalled how integration altered Yorktown’s climate. “We were called `The Country Club’ school, and with additional non-club members there was a general change in the perception of our school.” Posting as a onetime student reporter from the class of ’71, I underlined a difference between de facto and de jure integration. For most of the ‘60s, the one or two Black students in each class lived on the north side of Lee Highway, now Langston Blvd. In fall 1968, new boundaries took effect. We then had dozens of Black graduates of Swanson Junior High who previously would have gone to W-L. By my senior year, they numbered about 60, or 4 percent of the student body—as I reported in the Sentry. Students set up a Black-White Relations Committee, and I polled the Black students— who expressed alienation and plans to organize against discrimination. Brian ’70 recalled days of tension and wondering why Black kids sat together at a lunch table “as if that meant they somehow weren’t friendly when they were just sitting with their friends like everybody else.”

My friend Charlene Gardner, one of those isolated African Americans, told me she resented being “invisible” to some of those currently debating integration who still “did not acknowledge our existence. “When I was at Yorktown I received hate mail at my house. My mother and I read it, discussed it and, being the person she was, she taught me how to put it aside and go to school and get educated. So, Yorktown as an institution was a place Blacks had to get through, not necessarily to enjoy.”

Area jurisdictions recently recalled how our public libraries got integrated. The Arlington Public Library’s Center for Local History researched how African Americans in our county—barred from the fledgling mainstream library system— created the Henry Louis Holmes Library.

It existed from 1940-49, first at the Mount Olive Baptist Church on S. Ridge Rd, then at 13th and South Queens streets. It operated separately from the volunteer-created Arlington Library Association, which became a county department in 1937.

The Holmes collection comprised 2,334 books and was named for a onetime slave who was Alexandria County’s Revenue Commissioner from 1877-1904. Its building was razed after the 1950 integration.